


The Dead of Night

by emomi



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Blood and stuff, Can I make it any more obvious?, F/M, Vampire AU, fenris is a vampire hunter, hawke is a vampire, if ya know what I mean, leandra leandras, tw for the normal vampire things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:28:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27485032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emomi/pseuds/emomi
Summary: In a city where blood flows like water, there's only one man willing to stem the tide.Fenris is a vampire hunter with a dark past, bent on destroying Kirkwall's thriving vampiric population. That is, until he meets Hawke, a wise-cracking vampire with friends in high places. When the duo stumbles on a murderous conspiracy intent on challenging the powers that be in Kirkwall, Hawke and Fenris will stop at nothing to find the justice they seek.
Relationships: Fenris/Female Hawke
Comments: 3
Kudos: 19





	1. First Blood

Blood is surprisingly easy to come by in Kirkwall.

Take a walk in Hightown after midnight and within ten steps of your doorway you’ll cross at least one violent street gang, renegade Qunari, mage driven mad by the whispers of demons, or, more likely, all three. The veil is thin in Kirkwall, they say, and that makes people do some weird shit.

Maybe that’s why the guard seemed so eager to ignore the city’s massive vampire population. Let the blood-suckers satiate themselves on criminals. Two birds, one stone.

But Fenris knew better. He knew _exactly_ what vampires could do. And he would hunt them down, one by one, until none were left to spread their evil. Starting with Kirkwall.

All things considered, a terrible place to start.

It wasn’t that there was no trail to follow—hell, there were _too_ _many_ to follow. The city was absolutely infested with leeches. Hightown, Lowtown, Darktown, even the caves surrounding Kirkwall were notorious for housing hundreds of the blighted creatures.

Peons, insects, symptoms of a larger problem. Kill one and seven more rise to take its place. No, he needed to think bigger. Cut off the head of the snake and it dies. But where was the head?

It had taken weeks of trawling through vampire dens, stalking lone leeches through the city, and following up on dead end after dead end, but he finally found an actual lead. A meeting in the undercity, a quarter after midnight.

Hidden in the rafters of an old abandoned warehouse, Fenris was finally ready to begin his quest for vengeance. He watched the leeches file in slowly at random intervals. So far he’d counted twelve, though he was sure the leader of this band had yet to arrive. He was starting to get twitchy.

The door opened again—two more, a man and a woman. The man was a typical leech—hooded, eyes down, taking the phrase “cloak-and-dagger” to its literal extreme—but the woman, she was… Arresting. Her skin was pale, even for a vampire, which was especially stark against her short, jagged black hair. Her eyes were ice blue and bright enough for Fenris to notice, even from his position in the rafters. But it was her smile that caught him off guard. It was not the smug, self-aggrandizing smile that leeches typically wore to show off their precious fangs, but one of genuine levity. “So,” she said, voice sharp and clear as a sparrow, “where’s the snacks?”

Fenris swallowed a scoff. Of course, typical leech, thinking of her stomach before all else. The other vampires looked equally unamused.

“None? Really?” she asked. “It’s just that people usually bring snacks to these things. The last one of these my partner and I went to”—the partner in question pulled his hood lower and took a half step away from her—“had snacks. Remember? Those little pretzel things?”

“Hawke,” the partner growled, something akin to fear and incredulity in his voice.

“Oh don’t get all high and mighty on me _now_ , Anders. You ate just as many as I did—”

“Enough,” one of the other leeches said. She looked older, elven. “Pyotr should arrive shortly with _refreshments_.” No. No no.

“ _Refreshments_?” The woman’s voice was sickly sweet with false naivete. “Like wine?”

“ _Not_ wine.” _Fasta vass_. 

“Oh, you mean a _virgin_. Goody, my favorite.” Was that _sarcasm_ in the leech’s voice? He’d never known a vampire to be anything but overbearingly grave.

It didn’t matter. Fenris had bigger problems now than a _funny_ leech. _Refreshments_ meant blood. Blood meant people. He couldn’t just sit there and watch those creatures kill an innocent. He’d have to fight. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but that woman… Something told him there was more to her than meets the eye.

She and her partner took a step away from the rest to stand directly under his hiding spot.

“Andraste’s tits,” she muttered. “Tough crowd.”

“This isn’t open mic night at the Fanged Man, Hawke. _Please_ be serious.” Her companion. Anders.

Hawke poked him in the chest. “I’ll have you know I’m _very_ serious about open mic night at the Fanged Man.”

Anders put his face in his hands. “That’s not what I—”

The door slammed open. A man this time, human and muscular, dragging a gagged elven woman by her hair. No, not woman—she was scarcely more than fifteen. _Girl_.

Oh, Fenris would kill tonight.

The man threw the girl to the ground eliciting a muffled sob. The other leeches gathered in close, their leader arrived. “Brothers and Sisters,”—(“‘Brother _ssss_ and Sister _sssss_ ,’” Hawke mocked. “What are we snakes?” )—“the time of our ascension is nigh.” _Ascension?_ Maker’s breath. “Tonight, we put our plans into motion, but first—”

“And what plans are those exactly?” Hawke again. What was wrong with this woman?

The girl on the ground was still shaking and crying. The leader gave her a hard kick to shut her up. “Pardon?”

Hawke shot a look of distaste at the captive. “Sorry— Peter, was it?”

“ _Pyotr_.”

“Petey. Listen, some of us are new to this whole _secret vampire society_ thing and—”

“Hawke, what are you doing?” Anders hissed. Was it just Fenris’s imagination or did the cloaked leech look _repulsed_ by their leader’s show of vampiric superiority?

“ _And_ ,” Hawke continued, “we would _very much appreciate_ —see, I can be polite—a quick refresher on what exactly this ‘ _ascension_ ’ entails.”

“Insolent girl!” The elven leech stepped towards Hawke. “Since the moment you arrived, you have been nothing but—”

“ _Patience_ , Lucia. Our little sister has a point.” Pyotr held a steadying hand to his underling, stepping away from the girl on the floor for the first time, leaving a direct path from her to the door. Fenris, seeing an opportunity, dropped quietly from the rafters. “Tonight, we make sure that we are all _on the same page_ regarding the time, manner, and definition of our ascension—which, I shall remind you, is nigh— _then_ we put our plans into motion.” The other vampires murmured their approval, Pyotr’s chest puffed with pride. “But first, we feast!”

“You can try,” Fenris said. The girl was gone. Freed. He stood in her place, sword drawn.

“Well, this just got interesting,” Hawke muttered with a half-smile.

Pyotr was livid. If blood still ran through his undead veins they would certainly be bulging. “And who are you, churl, to defy me?” he said, stepping through the crowd of vampires and within arm’s reach of Fenris. _Excellent_.

“Your worst nightmare, leech.” His marks glowed blue, bathing the entire warehouse in its cleansing light. Fenris lurched forward, arm extended, and reached into the vampire’s broad chest. His fist closed around the man’s unbeating heart and yanked it out with a practiced expertise. Pyotr gurgled weakly and collapsed to the ground, truly dead. Fenris looked at the rest of the leeches, all frozen in shock (except, of course, Hawke who was grinning from ear to ear, fangs bared in what Fenris might call a mockery of joy if it weren’t so damn earnest), and said, “Who wishes to be next?”

Two vampires lunged at him, unmindful of the greatsword he still held in his hand. He decapitated both with one fell swoop. A third ducked under the blade and slashed upwards with her own dagger. He leaned backwards, narrowly avoiding the arc of the blade, and grabbed her wrist, twisting it so she dropped the knife with a sharp gasp. He threw her to the floor and turned just in time to deflect a blow from a red-haired human vampire. Fenris plunged his sword through the man’s heart, wrenching it upwards as he pulled it out, clefting him very nearly in twain. The leech at his feet reached for her knife, but he kicked it away before she could get a solid grip. Her fingers crunched painfully under his boot.

“On your left, Nightmare!” Hawke called out from somewhere behind him. Fenris’s instincts kicked in before his logic could tell him that trusting the advice of a vampire mid-battle was a mistake. He rolled right just as an axe slammed into the ground where he’d stood. Lucia, the elder elf, hefted it back up and prepared to swing again. Fenris grabbed the disarmed leech on the floor by the back of the cloak and shoved her into the axe’s path. It embedded deep in her neck, severing it enough to kill her. Lucia shrieked in frustration and attempted to pull it out and try again, but it was too late. Fenris was already glowing at her chest, punching through the leech’s torso and sending her heart flying out her back.

Hawke caught it, like a child’s toy ball. There were four dead vampires at her feet. “Impressive,” she said. “Also, yuck.” She made a face and dropped the heart.

Fenris rushed her. She was a leech, he was not about to let her charm her way into an upper hand. No, better to kill her quick.

Inches from her throat, something stopped him, freezing his muscles. His fingers could barely even twitch. From the corner of his eye he saw her partner, arm extended, surrounded by a faint bluish light. A mage. Of course. Why should anything be _easy_?

“Well,” Hawke said, unfazed. “This is a poor start to our working relationship, don’t you think?”

She waited for a response. Fenris didn’t say anything. He _couldn’t_ say anything.

Hawke seemed to realize this. “Anders, can you at least let him talk?”

The mage grimaced. “Why? We should get out of here while we still can.”

“I’m not leaving,” Hawke snapped. “And maybe _he’ll_ laugh at my jokes.”

“No one laughs at your jokes.”

“You wound me.”

“No, I’m _saving_ you.” Anders nodded towards Fenris. “He’s the one trying to wound you.”

Fenris found he could still groan. Hawke shot Anders a glare. “Oh, just let him go already. I can handle this.”

The magic abruptly ended. Fenris lowered his arms to his sides but made no other move. “Speak, if you’ve something to say.”

Hawke smiled at him. Even with the fangs, it read more friendly than threatening. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, you know.”

Fenris tensed. Hawke didn’t seem like the sort to work for slave catchers but he’d been wrong before. “Why?”

“You’re the Blue Wraith,” she said. “I’ve heard so much about you, and I suppose I wanted to see if the rumors were true.”

 _Blue Wraith?_ “You have… heard of me?”

Hawke cocked an eyebrow. “Of course. An elf with strange, glowing markings who’s been single-handedly wiping out vampire enclaves across Kirkwall? _That’s_ the kind of thing that gets people talking—and if you hadn’t noticed yet, we vampires are a chatty lot.”

“So you’re here to kill me.”

“Maker, no.” Hawke threw her hands up. “Again, with the violence. Why does everybody always think I’m coming to kill them?”

“Because you usually are,” Anders said.

“Thanks for that.” Hawke scowled, but kept her attention on Fenris. “I’m not here to kill you. We want the same thing.”

“I want to kill you,” Fenris said, though he made no move to do so. Hawke waved him off.

“Besides that,” she said. “We both want to take down this”—she gestured to the warehouse generally—“whatever _this_ is.”

“You mean you don’t know?” he asked. How could she not know?

“All I know is that these people are connected to a series of high profile disappearances of Hightown noblewomen,” she said. “Though I doubt Mayor Pete over here had much of anything to do with that. Far as I can tell he’s just a henchman.” 

“If he was just a henchman then why did you come here?”

Hawke shrugged. “I thought there might be snacks.”

“ _Snacks_?”

“Snacks.”

Fenris sighed. This was getting them nowhere. “If you have nothing else to tell me, then I’ll be on my way.” He glanced at the pile of dead leeches at her feet, and it struck him that he may not have been able to handle so many on his own. “Thank you for the assistance.”

“Wait,” Hawke said. “I know when the next meeting is.”

Fenris looked at the dead vampires again.

“Different people, obviously.”

“Go on.”

“Agree to work with me and I will.”

Fenris scoffed. “Not a chance.”

“Fine.” Hawke pulled a small knife from one of the corpses and began wiping it off with one of their cloaks. “Find the next meeting on your own. Though, remind me— How long did it take you to find this one?” He said nothing. “And it’s not even an important one. Well, I’m sure you could find the next by yourself. You seem a very capable, _sociable_ sort.”

She was right—of course she was. Despite his best efforts, he was apparently _known_ now, which would make information gathering that much more difficult—and there was no guarantee he would ever find out about another meeting. Hawke was offering him an opportunity, one he was loath to give up. Still, something didn’t sit right with him. “And what do you get out of this?”

“Company.” She looked him over. “ _Fine_ company.” Fenris twitched.

“You already have company,” he said, sparing half a glance to her companion.

“Anders? Oh, he’s barely tolerable.” The mage sputtered indignantly. “And busy,” she continued. “Unfortunately, he can’t follow me everywhere.”

“Unfortunate for me or for you, Hawke?” Anders said, arms crossed.

“Whichever makes you feel better.”

“You can’t honestly prefer someone who’s tried to _kill you_ over me.”

Hawke shot Fenris a sideways glance, grin sly and calculating. “He couldn’t kill me,” she said, voice low and husky. Half challenge, half… something else.

Fenris refused to acknowledge the chills running down his spine. “You’re hiding something.”

Hawke shrugged. “We’re all hiding something. Why are _you_ doing this?”

Fenris said nothing.

“See?” she said. “But I do see your point, and I’m prepared to offer assurance.”

“Assurance?”

“A phylactery. _My_ phylactery.”

Phylactery? “You are… in the Circle?”

Hawke laughed. “Maker’s breath, do I _look_ like I’m in the Circle? No, but I’m ready to make one right now, and give it to you.”

Anders looked positively beside himself. “Are you _absolutely insane_?” She didn’t answer.

“Why would I want your phylactery?” Fenris asked.

“I don’t know, so you could find me wherever I go? Sneak up on me during the day and _try_ to kill me?” she said. “Whatever you want. I’ll be _entirely_ at your mercy.” She smirked.

Fenris flushed. She was right though—with her phylactery he could track her down no matter where she tried to hide. But… “You need a mage to make a phylactery.”

Hawke gestured to Anders. “And we have a perfectly good one right here.” 

“No,” Anders shook his head incredulously. “Absolutely not.”

Fenris laughed humorlessly. “I don’t trust your leech mage.”

She scowled. “We prefer the term _nutritionally challenged_ ,” she said. “Which, for what it’s worth, Anders is not. He’s a Grey Warden. Totally immune.”

Fenris really looked at Anders for the first time. Blonde, pale but not _deathly_ so, dark circles under his eyes. His teeth, which Fenris could see through his currently agape mouth, were rounded, not fanged. He certainly looked human—and the Grey Warden thing would explain why the other leeches didn’t pick up on his scent the moment he entered the room—but he was still at least nominally loyal to Hawke, who definitely was a vampire. “I know a mage,” he said. “We go to her.”

Hawke smiled. “Lead the way.”

The alienage at night was thick with anticipatory silence—for good reason. If something bad happened in Kirkwall, it happened here first, and it happened here worst. The elves learned long ago to be prodigiously careful—barring themselves in their homes well before sundown every night—and the unlucky few who did have to go out after at night were well-armed with pocketfuls of garlic (mostly ineffective), chantry symbols (totally useless), and, well, arms (just about the only thing that worked). The vast majority who stayed indoors knew better than to answer the door for anyone who knocked—nine times out of ten it was a vampire looking for an easy meal—though, thankfully for Fenris, Merrill was not part of that majority.

Whether it was genuine naivete, confidence in her skill as a mage, or some combination thereof, the girl had a startlingly slipshod sense of self-preservation. Not that Fenris generally minded, though—she was a blood mage, barely better than a vampire in his book.

They’d met shortly after he’d come to Kirkwall. He’d found some ancient relic in a vampire den that required discreet appraisal, and he’d heard rumors of a formerly Dalish mage living in the alienage who could do that for him. They didn’t get on—he could smell the blood magic on her right away, and she, shameless, freely admitted to it—but she was the only mage in the city he knew who might be willing to do him a favor.

Merrill’s home was defiantly cheery, which was probably why she’d managed to go unmolested by the templars for so long—no one really suspected the sweet, spacey elf who decorated her hovel with bright paints and flower garlands of being a maleficar. Hawke—Anders had left them semi-reluctantly in Darktown—took one look at the place and said, “ _You_ know this person?”

Fenris chose to ignore the barb. “Keep your voice down.”

“For what?” Hawke scoffed. “The things that go bump in the night? If you haven’t noticed, that’s _us_.”

“ _You_ , maybe.” He knocked on the door, someone inside dropped something. He heard a faint _Oh!_ of surprise.

“There you go, pulling the vampire card again.” She was smiling at him. Were they developing a _rapport_? He didn’t know how to feel about that.

Someone approached the door from the inside. “Who is it?” Merrill singsonged from behind the door. She had the sense to ask, at the very least, not that anyone else in the alienage would even risk it.

“Fenris,” he growled. The door opened.

“Fenris!” she said, smiling like they were old friends. “Oh, and you brought a friend! I didn’t know you had those.” She cringed. “No, no, I didn’t mean it like that—I don’t have any friends either. Of course I have my clan, but we’re not exactly—”

“Merrill.”

She held a hand out to Hawke. “Hello, I’m Merrill.”

“Hawke,” she said, positively beaming. “Who wouldn’t want to be friends with you?”

“Oh, that’s very kind. Unless you’re making fun of me—most people are, though I can never tell. Are you a vampire? Please come in.” Someone would have to have a conversation with Merrill about stranger danger. Not Fenris, obviously, but someone.

Hawke shot Fenris a sidelong glance. “Thank you. You know, it’s so _nice_ to finally meet someone with proper manners.” She followed Merrill inside. Fenris did a quick sweep of the area—nothing unusual—and stepped in as well.

“Proper? Nobody’s ever called me that before.” Merrill crouched to pick up a halla statue that had fallen on the floor. “Sorry about the mess. Can I offer you anything? I have… water.”

Hawke opened her mouth to speak, but Fenris was quicker. “We are not here for small talk.”

“Well, I know that,” she said. “But serious people need water too sometimes.”

“No water, thanks.” Hawke glared at Fenris like he just kicked a cat. “We need you to make a phylactery. Can you do that?”

“Sure. What’s a phylactery? Is that some sort of human dessert?”

“You don’t know?” Hawke asked. “Do the Dalish not have phylacteries?”

This line of questioning was entirely moot. “Obviously not,” Fenris said. “She would not ask otherwise.”

“Don’t mind Fenris,” Merrill said. “He’s a bit of a grump.”

“I am not a _grump_.”

Hawke laughed. “I was thinking more along the lines of curmudgeon.”

“Oooh, that’s a fun word!”

“Can we get to the point?” Fenris snapped. “We do not have long until sunrise.”

“Unfortunately, the curmudgeon is right,” Hawke said. Fenris seethed. “A phylactery is a vial of blood that templars use to find runaway mages. Everyone who enters the Circle gets one.”

“Oh, you mean an _elghil’an’alin_. Easy-peasy,” Merrill said. “I just need an itty-bitty bit of your blood.”

“Please. Take as much as you want, I’m certainly not using it.” Fenris hated how blasé Hawke was about this. It was no small thing to give up your blood to a blood mage—Fenris knew that better than anyone.

Merrill didn’t seem to mind—mages never did, he’d found. She rummaged through one of her many piles of accumulated junk and pulled out a small glass phial and a knife. “Would you do the honors, or should I?”

Hawke took the knife and pressed it into her wrist. Vampiric blood, black and slow, pooled at the wound. Merrill unstoppered the phial and siphoned the blood into it until it was about two-thirds full. When she had enough, she handed Hawke a rag and a bit of gauze and placed the phial on her table, where she began to chant incantations over it. Hawke held the rag to her injured wrist and grimaced as the blood began to glow bright red. After a few seconds the glow faded to something softer and less conspicuous, and Hawke’s pain seemed to fade with it. She stared at her phylactery, spellbound. “That’s it?”

“Yep,” Merrill said, still cheery despite the blood magic. “All done. Here you go.” She handed the phial to Hawke.

“It’s his.” She nodded towards Fenris. “We have an agreement.”

“Oh,” said Merrill. “Alright then.” She gave the phylactery to Fenris, which he quickly slipped into one of his pockets. “It should glow brighter the closer it gets to Hawke.”

Hawke looked suddenly weary. “Good,” she said. “I would love to stay and chat, Merrill, but I really should get home before daylight.”

“Oh, yes, of course. Wouldn’t want you to burn up, now would we?” Merrill led them back to the door, then turned round to face them, chewing her lip with uncertainty. “Do feel free to visit again, Hawke. It was so lovely to meet you, and I really don’t have very many friends in the city.”

Hawke looked her over one last time. “You know, I think I will. You seem like a lot of fun.”

Merrill trilled delightedly. “Oh, nobody’s ever called me that before either. Thank you, Hawke.” She smiled at her as they stepped back into the alienage. “Safe travels.”

Hawke waved as they walked away. “Well,” she said after they’d gone a few paces from the door, “she was nice.”

Fenris scoffed. _Nice_ , all you had to be was _nice_ and people would fall all over you, regardless who you were—maleficar, vampire, or slaver. It was foolish and sickening—nice did not equal good. And Fenris was not nice, nor did he try to be. Better to be mean, better to be a _curmudgeon_ , and alive than nice and undead. That had never bothered him before, and yet…

“She’s a blood mage,” he said, with no shortage of curmudgeonly spite.

Hawke shrugged. “Aren’t we all?” Flippant. Typical.

“No,” he said, “ _we_ are not.”

Hawke stopped walking. She looked at him, her expression grave for the first time instead of mocking. “No,” she agreed, “we are not.” She looked eastward, the sun would rise in little over an hour. “Meet me tomorrow night, by the docks.”

“By which docks?”

“You’re a smart boy,” she said, one eyebrow raised in challenge. “Figure it out.”

Fenris never needed much sleep—a quirk of having spent the last few years of his life as a slave on the run—which allowed him to spend his scant hours of daylight looking into rumors on the strange vampire he’d apparently allied himself with. He suspected she had friends in high places, many leeches do, but he hadn’t expected to find her up there with them. Lady Marian Hawke was a noble, the last scion of the once great Amells, with an estate in Hightown. She was, technically, his neighbor.

She had wealth, influence—she wasn’t some starving blood-sucker desperately searching for an easy meal. So why was she slinking through Darktown with an apostate to attend the cloak-and-dagger meetings of a secret society of vampires? What was she looking for?

He found her in a particularly shady (no pun intended) corner of the docks—the phylactery Merrill made apparently worked—chatting amiably with a clean-shaven dwarven man. Fenris watched them from the shadows for a while, until the dwarf waved goodbye and she turned towards his hiding spot. “You can come out now,” she said. “The scary stranger’s gone.”

He dropped from the roof he’d been perched on. “How did you—?”

“A vampire’s gotta have her secrets. Come on.” There was a wooden pallet on the ground that she pulled away to reveal a trap door. “We’re late.”

It struck him that this was a terrible idea. “Why are you doing this?” he asked, again.

She pulled open the trap door and stepped inside. “I told you, I like the company. Are you coming or not?”

He followed her through the door into what appeared to be a very old sewer. “You could hire mercenaries. Private investigators.”

“Who has the coin for that?”

“You, Serah Hawke.”

She evaluated him. “Alright, fine, I’m rolling in it, you caught me. But _this_ is personal.”

“Why?” he asked. He could hear voices up ahead, they were getting close to their destination. “What do they have on you?”

“ _They_ ,” she said, “have nothing _on_ me— _I’m_ a saint. If you must know, they have something _of_ mine, and I intend to get it back.” She stopped. “Put your hood up, we’re here.”

He did, and they stepped into a large, surprisingly luxurious meeting hall. There was a stage on one end of the room on which a handful of black-clad musicians played some appropriately dour music. The walls were draped with thick, crimson curtains, lit dimly by a dozen strategically placed candelabras. It was a ridiculous—and, frankly, tacky—excess, but Fenris was more concerned by the number of people in attendance. At least thirty that he could see—probably more. If things broke bad…

“Look, hors d’oeuvres,” Hawke said, and dragged Fenris towards a black tableclothed buffet table. Fenris figured a vampire gathering would involve fountains of blood or heads on plates but this was all… dreadfully mundane. There were crackers, a variety of cheeses (which Hawke gravitated towards immediately), and even several elaborate charcuterie boards.

His brow furrowed. “Where is the—?”

“Blood? They won't have any. They only want the real serious types here—the ones that don’t need a free meal dangled in front of them to actually show up.” She poured two glasses of wine and handed one to Fenris. “Here, drink this, or pretend to. It’s not tainted and it’ll help you fit in.” Most of the guests _were_ casually swirling glasses of red wine…

He brought the glass to his lips. He didn’t need a sip to know what it was—Agreggio Pavali. He must have flinched. Hawke noticed. “Not to your liking?” she asked, looking idly around the room.

“No,” he said. “It reminds me of… home.” Home. Whatever that means.

Hawke picked up the bottle and read the label. “Seheron. Is that where you’re from?”

Fenris shrugged.

“I’m Fereldan,” she said, and took a bite of cheese. “Though you’ve probably picked up on that already.”

“The accent gives you away,” he said. “And the persistent smell of _wet dog_.”

“I resent that,” Hawke said through a mouthful of cheese. “I sound like a born and bred Marcher.”

Fenris chuckled. “ _That’s_ what you take offense to?”

Hawke smiled. “So you _do_ have a sense of humor. Good to know.” Another pair of leeches approached the table, so they stepped away. “And I’m Fereldan. We _like_ the smell of wet dog. Which reminds me—You don’t. Smell, that is. I assume it has something to do with those markings?”

“Perceptive.”

“What _are_ they?”

“Lyrium,” he said, and left it at that.

“Fascinating,” she said. “How’d you get them?”

A question Fenris was happy to avoid. “Look, do you see that?” He pointed to a section of curtain.

“It’s… moving. Someone’s either hiding or it’s—”

“A draft,” he finished. “A secret entrance.”

“Good eye,” she said. The candles dimmed, the band stopped playing. “Quick, let’s go before someone gets on that stage and starts talking about the beautiful woman and tattooed elf who wiped out a dozen vampires last night.”

There was a slit in the curtain—hardly noticeable unless you were looking for it—that served as an entryway into the secret tunnel behind it. They slipped through unnoticed just as a robed man stepped onstage. Fenris had just enough time to clock that he was gray-haired and likely elven before Hawke pulled him through the curtain.

“Come on,” Hawke whispered, suddenly serious. “I smell people up ahead.”

That was enough to get Fenris’s attention. “How many?”

“Two… Maybe three.” Her nose wrinkled. “It’s hard to tell. Something’s off.”

“Are they alive?”

“They better be.” She pressed forward. There were no lights in the square hallway, plunging them almost entirely into darkness the moment it curved away from the party. Hawke led them down the twisting path by scent, and, after the third time Fenris bumped into her when she stopped unexpectedly, she cursed and offered him her hand. He took it—for practical reasons, of course—and tried to ignore the increase in his heart rate.

“Wait,” Hawke said, and dropped his hand. He felt her crouch down before him—the dark did wonders to hide his flush. “There’s something here, it’s— _Maker’s breath_.”

She sounded… perturbed. He didn’t know Hawke could even _be_ perturbed. “What is it?”

“A… _hand_ ,” she said. “I-it’s been severed. There’s a ring…” 

Fenris’s blood chilled. He reached instinctively for his blade. What was _happening_ here? “Could it be related to the missing women?”

Hawke stilled. “ _Shit_.”

“What?” His grip tightened on his weapon.

Hawke shot up. “We need to go. _Now_.” She sprinted ahead.

 _Kaffas_. He chased her around another damned corner onto a balcony overlooking a large ritual chamber. “Hawke—” A panel at his feet lowered into the floor.

 _Click. Shink._ A trap.

He heard the _whoosh_ of darts. He braced for impact.

Nothing.

He looked at Hawke. She had one hand up, brows furrowed in concentration. Inches from his face hovered four darts, stuck in an invisible magic barrier.

Hawke was a mage. _Of course_ , Hawke was a mage.

She dropped the barrier. The darts clanged as they hit the ground. A voice came from somewhere in the chamber. “Gascard?”

Hawke and Fenris exchanged a panicked glance. “Uh,” Hawke ventured. “Yes?” Fenris was going to kill her.

There was a thunk from inside the chamber, followed by the sound of footsteps running away. “Shit,” Hawke said again. Fenris agreed. They charged into the chamber together.

It was large—also impractically lit by decorative candelabras—and filled with tables stacked high with… medical supplies? Runecrafting tools? A pile of dirty rags sat atop what appeared to be an altar, and beyond that, what looked like the entrance to more tunnels. Fenris was just quick enough to catch a swish of gray robes disappearing down the path. He made to follow, but Hawke didn’t. She was just staring, transfixed, at the altar. “Hawke,” he snapped, “they’re getting away—”

The rest of his chastisement died in his throat when the pile of rags _moaned_. No, not a pile of rags—a _woman_. Her face was pallid with blood loss and, worse than that, she looked… stitched together. If he looked closely—which he quickly decided he _shouldn’t_ —he could see that the skin where her neck met her shoulders changed slightly in hue, as though it was not originally from the same body. It was one of the worst things Fenris had ever seen—and coming from Tevinter, that was a high bar.

Hawke rushed forward to cradle the wretched creature in her arms. “Mother”— _Mother?_ —“can you hear me?”

Hawke’s _mother_ gurgled. “Marian?”

“Yes, it’s me,” Hawke breathed. “Can you walk?”

The woman smiled softly and brought a shaky, dead hand to her daughter’s face. “I knew you would come.” 

“Mother, can you walk?”

“Hush, darling, don’t worry about me,” she said. “I’ll get to see Bethany again, and your father. They’ll be so proud of you.” She coughed, spattering a few drops of rust colored blood onto Hawke’s face.

Hawke’s grip on the woman tightened. “No, Mother, I could— I could turn you—”

“My sweet, brave girl. It’s too late for me.” Her hand fell. She didn’t seem to notice. “I love you so much.” Her eyes closed, slowly and heavily, as though the burden of keeping them open was more than she could bear any longer.

“I love you too, Mother, but it’s— it’s not—” Hawke shook her gently.

“Tell Carver and Gamlen…” Her voice faded away to nothing.

“What? Mother, tell them what? Please, Mother, you can’t— I need you.” Hawke’s breaths were coming in short, sharp gasps—tears and mucus ran freely down her face. _Fenhedis_ , Fenris shouldn’t be here. He wasn’t her friend. He was barely even her ally—just last night he’d tried to kill her. He turned away from mother and daughter and leant against a table. He couldn’t watch this. He couldn’t—

A knife caught his eye—an obsidian stiletto, carved in one piece, inlaid with dimly glowing rubies—distinct from the polished silverite tools littering the tables. It was magic, he could feel it emanating off the dagger in waves. He reached for it without thinking. It pulsed strangely in his hands, making the tattoos on his knuckles tickle. He slipped it into a pocket.

Hawke wept quietly, and Fenris took great pains not to look at her. He examined everything in the room twice over, though he found nothing besides the dagger. Only when Hawke’s ragged, staccato breathing steadied did he turn back to her.

She was no longer crying, but she was still holding her mother in a dead-eyed fugue. He said her name quietly, gentler than he thought he was capable of. She didn’t respond.

He stepped closer. “Hawke,” he said again, louder. She looked at him, her grief so palpable it nearly bowled him over. “We need to leave.” The perpetrator was gone, but they could come back with friends at any moment, and Hawke was in no state to fight.

She lowered her mother’s limp body down to the altar and nodded. Her voice was hoarse and thick with tears. “We _will_ find whoever did this.” Not a question.

He answered anyway. “Yes. We will.”

“Good,” she said. “Now get out of my way so I can fireball the _shit_ out of this fucking place.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> special thanks to my vamp obsessed bff who spent a ridiculous amount of time coming up with an elven word for phylactery lol


	2. Pound of Flesh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we did folks! we finished ch 2 in one month!

“I told you, Hawke,” Aveline said, “vampires fall under _templar_ purview.”

“Since when?” Hawke paced restlessly around the guard-captain’s office. She hadn’t stopped since they got here.

Aveline was unmoved. “Since the viscount declared it so.”

“So go to his office and tell him to _un_ -declare it so!”

Aveline sighed. “It’s not that simple. The order came directly from the Knight-Commander herself.”

“Meredith is not the viscount,” Fenris chimed in from his position near the door. Hawke’s wild gesticulating made it too dangerous to stand anywhere else.

“No,” Aveline said, “but we all know who the real power in Kirkwall is.”

“So, you’re saying you’re useless!” Hawke shouted, arms akimbo, the pacing momentarily stopped.

“Alright.” 

“ _Alright?_ ”

Aveline nodded. “I know you’re angry, Hawke, I’m not unsympathetic. Go ahead and shout if you need to. I’m a big girl, I can take it.”

Hawke slumped into a chair with a groan. “It’s not fun if you don’t fight back.”

Aveline leant against her desk, angling herself towards her friend. “ _Grief_ isn’t fun, but I won’t let you destroy your relationships over it. Leandra wouldn’t want that.”

Hawke rubbed her face and sighed. “Is there really nothing you can do?”

“I’ll hold off on reporting this to Meredith for as long as I can,” Aveline said. “It should give you some time to investigate. I can’t promise more than that.”

“I guess that’s _something_ ,” Hawke grumbled. She looked at Aveline. Something passed between them, something wordless and intimate. There was an easy affection between the women that Fenris didn’t quite know how to parse. _He’d_ never known anything like it, and it certainly went against everything he knew about vampires to see one so friendly—and with a human no less.

“Can you give us a moment?” Aveline asked him. He looked to Hawke, who didn’t meet his eye but nodded her assent. Normally, a vampire wishing to have a moment alone with a human meant just one thing—but Fenris got the impression that Aveline could handle herself, and that Hawke wouldn’t do that.

“I’ll wait outside,” he said, and coughed. His limbs had felt too stiff since the events of the night before, and they felt even stiffer now. What was Hawke doing to him?

He stepped out of the barracks and into the viscount’s keep proper. It was one of Hightown’s busier buildings—and one that Fenris tended to avoid if he could. His continued existence in Kirkwall wasn’t necessarily legal—at least not in a technical sense—so he wasn’t exactly keen on spending time around large gatherings of the city’s most powerful authorities. He figured, for some reason, that Hawke would be the same.

Though he wasn’t sure what he knew about Hawke anymore. She was an enigma, a bundle of contradictions that he couldn’t quite wrap his head around. He thought she was a noblewoman—privileged and rich—yet last night when they climbed out of a tunnel into some dark, forgotten corner of Lowtown, she looked around absently and mumbled, “My uncle lives near here.”

“Your uncle?” he asked. People of Hawke’s stature generally didn’t have relations in this part of the city—at least not ones that they advertised.

She nodded. “We used to live with him after…” She trailed off, Fenris didn’t press. Then, abruptly, “I’ll be at the Fanged Man.”

And that’s where he found her, seated at a crowded table with the same dwarf he’d seen her with the night before. When she noticed him, she left her dwarven friend to his gaggle of fawning admirers and said simply, “We need to speak to the guard captain.”

He almost laughed. He should have figured that if anyone in the city could arrange an impromptu meeting with Kirkwall’s highest ranking lawperson it would be Hawke.

Apparently, they were friends. Old friends. Family, practically, according to Hawke. You don’t flee a Blight together and come out strangers on the other end.

Fenris didn’t know anything about that. He might have, once, in Seheron, but Danarius saw to it that nothing came of that… 

“Broody? Earth to Broody?” A hand waved in front of his eyes. “Glower any harder and you’ll have this whole place flooded.”

“Isabela. What are _you_ doing here?" He was under the impression that most pirate captains preferred to avoid places like this.

“Some fool magistrate lost his sister’s pinky bone in a bush on the Wounded Coast. He’s offering a handsome reward to anyone who finds it.” She dangled the bespoke bone before him. “Though they _really_ should be thanking me for distracting you from your sulking. You’re a water hazard.”

“Pardon?”

“All these women soaking their breeches at the sight of you. We’re only seconds away from an absolute deluge of—”

Fenris groaned. “Please, _do not_ finish that sentence.”

Isabela mimed an explosion. “ _Sploosh_.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“On the contrary, I find it actually quite—”

“What are we talking about?” Hawke emerged from the barracks, thank the Maker.

“Oh, _hello_ ,” Isabela said, blessedly distracted from whatever vile thing she was certainly about to say next. “Who might you be?”

“This is Hawke,” Fenris said. “Hawke, this is Isabela.”

“That’s _Captain_ Isabela, though I am unfortunately sans ship at the moment. Has anyone ever told you that you have _beautiful_ hands?”

“I get that all the time. Skilled, too,” Hawke said, smirking. “You know Fenris?”

Isabela sighed. “Alas, only in the literal sense. Tell me more about those hands of yours.”

“Please don’t,” he said. He hated this topic of discussion even more than the previous somehow. “What did Aveline say?”

“Nothing important.” Hawke sighed. “We’re still stuck at square one.”

“Ooh, I love a good mystery,” Isabela said. “Maybe I can be of more help than Captain Man-Hands.”

Hawke and Fenris exchanged a quick, conspiratorial glance. Spreading the news that they were looking into the murderous activities of a secretive cabal of vampires might come back to bite (heh) them in the ass, but Isabela could be a useful resource, in her own way. If one of the conspirators ever stepped foot in the Blooming Rose, for example, no one would know more about it than she. He nodded to Hawke. He’d let her appraise Isabela of the details of the case—he wasn’t sure how much she was comfortable sharing and he didn’t want to overstep. 

“We’re looking into the disappearances of a few prominent socialites in Hightown,” she said.

Isabela scoffed. “Not this again.”

“Again?”

“Some cad in the marketplace tried to get me to find his ‘missing’ wife for him.” She rolled her eyes. “Poor woman probably just left him, not that I blame her.” To Fenris, “Didn’t expect to catch _you_ in the business of chasing down runaways.”

Hawke’s brow furrowed. “What’s _that_ mean?”

“She may not have run away,” Fenris said, cursing Isabela’s loose tongue (he was, perhaps, the only person in Thedas who would _dare_ ). “We have evidence there might be a serial killer on the loose.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What kind of evidence?”

Hawke fished through her pockets and handed Isabela a small, gold signet ring. The pirate eyed it greedily. “We found this on a severed hand,” Hawke said.

Isabela handed it back with a grimace. “You tell me that _after_ you let me finger the thing? Though now that you mention, Ghyslain did say something about a ring…”

Fenris and Hawke shared another glance. “You said he was in the market?”

“I did not kill my wife!” Ghyslain de Carrac shouted.

“I never said you did,” the man across from him, a graying templar, replied. “I was simply hoping you could give me more information about her disappearance.”

“ _Disappearance_? The lascivious bitch ran off with one of her whores!”

“You sure?” Hawke tossed him the ring. “Recognize that?”

He caught it with one hand. “Ninette’s wedding ring! Where did you find this?”

Hawke shrugged. “Her hand. You do _not_ want to know where the rest of her was.”

Ghyslain turned green. “I— You don’t mean—?”

Hawke nodded.

“Her family will have my head for this,” he groaned.

“Not if we find the person who did this,” the templar said. “Now, please tell me again—”

“No,” Ghyslain said. “I will have no more involvement in this. I am going home.”

The templar lowered his face into his palms. Hawke watched Ghyslain slink off. “It’s for the best—I doubt the poor bastard knew anything important.”

“He was still the best lead I had.”

“Not anymore,” she said. “I’m Hawke”—she jutted a thumb at Fenris—“and the grouchy elf is Fenris. I didn’t know there was anyone else investigating this case.”

“Emeric.” He bowed. “And there isn’t, technically. I’m not supposed to be here. Meredith forbade anyone from investigating. Said it was a matter for the guard.”

“Not if vampires are involved.”

“You have any proof of that?”

“I saw it with my own two eyes!”

“I am afraid, Serah, that the word of one or two, ehm, well”—his eyes flit to her teeth—“ _you_ will not be enough to convince the Knight-Commander.”

“ _I_ am not a vampire,” Fenris said.

“You could try.” Emeric shrugged. “Good luck getting Meredith to see sense.”

“So what,” Hawke said, “people are dying and no one does anything because it’s not their _jurisdiction_?”

“Welcome to bureaucracy.”

“ _Now_ is not the time to discover sarcasm, Fenris!”

“He does have a point,” Emeric said. “If anyone’s going to get to the bottom of this, it’s not going to be the Order _or_ the guard.”

“All right, guess it’s Hawke to the rescue once again,” she said. “What do you know?”

The templar raised one eyebrow in suspicion. “And why should I trust you?” 

“Do you see anyone else around?”

Emeric sighed. “Maker’s breath, that’ll do it. This all started about a year ago with the disappearance of Mharen, one of our Circle mages. She was a Loyalist, not the type to just run away. We followed her phylactery to a foundry in Lowtown, but the trail ran cold. Since then there’ve been three more disappearances, including Ninette.”

“Four,” Hawke said. “They took my mother as well.”

“I… am sorry,” he said. “Though surely you must understand the importance of bringing the man who did this to justice?”

“‘The man?’” Fenris said. “You know who he is?”

“I have some idea. Mharen had a suitor—we thought she might’ve gone to meet him. He sent her a bouquet of white lilies which, incidentally, all the other missing women also received.”

Hawke grimaced. “Including my mother.”

“Yes,” he said. “I was able to trace the flowers back to an Orlesian nobleman named Gascard DuPuis, but a search of his home turned up nothing.”

“Did you say _Gascard_ DuPuis?” Hawke asked.

Emeric nodded. “You know him?”

“No,” she said. “But the person who killed my mother sure seemed to.”

“Damnation.” He scoffed. “I _knew_ he was involved, but Meredith told me to back off. Said I was bringing too much ‘negative attention’ to the Order.”

“Where does he live?” Fenris asked. “ _We_ don’t need permission to search his home.”

“No,” Emeric agreed. “You don’t. He lives south of the Chantry, next door to the De Laucets.”

“I know the family,” Hawke said.

Emeric bowed again. “If you find anything, let me know. It’s about time we bring this criminal to justice.”

“So,” Hawke said, “what do you think?”

Fenris started. Hawke had been quietly lost in thought since they left the market, and the silence between them had been almost companionable. “About what?”

“Emeric. Gascard DuPuis. The stars. Take your pick.”

“Emeric believes Gascard is the only person involved in the murders,” he said.

“And you disagree?”

He shrugged. “Unless he had occasion to call his own name when we intruded on his business last night.”

“True.” Hawke let out a deep breath through her nose. “I don’t get it. This obviously isn’t the work of one madman—or even two. There’s a whole _conspiracy_ of vampires behind them. Why?”

“They’re leeches,” Fenris said. “Do they need a reason?”

“Yes, thank you!” Hawke stopped and turned to face him. “You know we’re not all evil, heartless _leeches_? Some of us just got stuck in a shitty situation.”

“So says every vampire,” he said, unfazed. “And every blood mage, too, for that matter.”

“Blood mages _choose_ to be blood mages. I didn't choose this.”

Fenris rubbed at the markings on his palm. “Nobody chooses their fate.”

Hawke crossed her arms. “So I should’ve laid down and died, then? Left my family to fend for themselves? _During a Blight?_ ”

“That is not what I said.” He tried to step around her, but she stood her ground.

“What _are_ you saying, then?”

“There is a murderer on the loose.”

“Who killed _my_ mother!”

“And if you keep shouting, he’ll know we’re here!”

She scoffed. “If he lives near the De Launcets he should be used to shouting by now!”

Fenris grimaced. _He_ lived near the De Launcets. “True enough.” He didn’t move. Neither did Hawke. “Should we—?”

She sighed and nodded. “Let’s go. We can continue this discussion later.”

They weren’t far now—this part of Hightown was not particularly sprawling. The estates here mostly belonged to wealthy foreigners who were only in Kirkwall once or twice a year for business, so gaudiness tended to take a back seat to functionality. That is, except for the home of the De Launcets, which was about as gaudy as they come. Every square inch of the house was decorated with art, sculpture, and flourishes that were probably all the rage in Val Royeaux a decade ago. The gardens at the front of the estate were filled with colorful flowers native to Orlais, miserably struggling to adapt to Kirkwall’s warmer climate. It was, rather appropriately, a house perfect for a family of sad clowns. The plain mansion squeezed in next to it was practically invisible.

Which, of course, made it an ideal base of operations for a shady vampire cult.

The windows were dark. “Do you think anyone’s home?” Hawke asked. Fenris shrugged. “Maybe they’re asleep.”

“We should be careful,” he said.

Hawke rolled her eyes. “I’m not stupid, Fenris.”

“If you insist.” He checked the door. It was slightly ajar, but didn’t seem trapped “Odd.”

The house itself was ransacked. A chaise lounge was overturned and ripped open. Strewn about the floor were pieces of broken glass, broken-off moulding, and other barely identifiable detritus. “Looks like someone left in a hurry,” Hawke whispered, and carefully went inside. “We should see if they left anything behind.”

Fenris stepped around the pieces of a shattered ceramic vase to crouch before the fireplace in the living room. “Still warm.”

Hawke was poking at the chaise with her foot. “So we just missed them, then?”

“Unless they haven’t left.” He picked up one of the pieces of ceramic. It smelt sweet, like white lilies. “Why take time to break a flower vase if they were in such a rush to leave?”

“Believe it or not vampires _can_ be clumsy. Perhaps they accidentally knocked it over?”

“Into the wall?” He pointed to a large, wet stain on the wallpaper at about eye level. He’d thrown enough wine bottles at walls to know what that meant.

“Hm, that would be rather difficult, yes,” Hawke said thoughtfully. “Then you think someone’s trying to convince us they’ve abandoned this place? Why?”

“To get us to leave?”

Hawke huffed. “That’s stupid. Any investigator worth their salt would know to search the ramshackle mansion for clues.”

“Then they hoped to buy time to get away.” Fenris stood and brushed the dust off his clothes. “Or perhaps they _are_ simply stupid.”

They heard a crash from overhead. “You know,” Hawke said, looking to the ceiling, “I’m starting to think this ‘stupid’ theory of yours might have some merit. You think they even realize we’re here?”

Another crash, followed by a shout. “They will soon.”

Hawke smiled grimly. “Damn straight.”

“You’ve ruined everything! Everything!”

“ _Me?_ You’re the one who ran off without the body!”

“If you had been there, _like you were supposed to_ , I would not have had to!”

“If you had turned me, _like you promised_ —”

“I was so close! Oh, Elizabeth, I’ll never find anyone who matches your face so well…”

They caught the two men in the midst of trashing their study. The older man, vampiric and gray-haired, was throwing all manner of thick tomes at the younger, Orlesian man, who was trying at once to dodge the books and collect them into a satchel hanging at his side. 

“Truly,” Hawke said, casually leaning against the threshold, “what the _fuck_?”

Fenris, equally casually, reached for his weapon. “Seconded.”

“Who are _you_?” said the younger man, before getting absolutely beaned by an extremely comprehensive Tevene-to-Elvish dictionary.

“ _You!_ ” The vampire turned his attention from his writhing pupil. “You’re the one who attacked my laboratory last night!”

“That’s a funny way to say you murdered my mother and ran away.”

“Murdered?” The man spat. “I gave her new life! A higher purpose!”

“I’ll give you a higher purpose,” Hawke said, hands ablaze.

“Wait, please,” said the man on the floor, his nose bleeding profusely. “We’re on the same side!”

“Did you miss the part where I said you _murdered_ my mother?”

He struggled to his feet. “A regrettable sacrifice.”

“A perfect likeness! Perfect!”

Hawke growled. “I don’t care what it was, my mother is dead! You killed her!”

“I regret that we’ve caused you pain, mistress, but it was for the betterment of our kind.”

The man’s blood came too easily and too red to be a vampire’s. “ _Your_ kind?” Fenris asked.

“Well, eventually, Quentin was going to—”

“Never! Not after what you did to my _wife_!”

“Oh, for the love of—” Hawke, hands still alight with scorching blue flame, grabbed Quentin by the throat and squeezed. Her fingers seared through the undead flesh of his neck in seconds, allowing her to sever his windpipe with a vicious yank. He fell to his knees with a pathetic gurgle, where Fenris took the liberty of slicing off his head with his greatsword. It rolled lazily to the other man’s feet.

He cringed. “Ah. Well.”

Hawke let her hands grow brighter. “Answers. _Now_ , or I won’t be nearly as kind to you as I was to your friend.”

He nudged the head away with a toe. “He wasn’t my _friend_ , he was my”— Hawke’s glare turned sharp—“ah, I mean, anything you want, my lady.”

Hawke’s flames blinked out. “Good. Gascard DuPuis, I presume?” He nodded. “What did you mean by ‘betterment of our kind?’”

Gascard’s shoulders relaxed an inch. “The vampires of this city are tired of their oppression—”

Fenris snorted. “Oppression?”

“Yes, oppression.” Gascard sneered. “Vampires are forced to live their lives in the gutter, surviving off scraps, while lesser beings rule over us. Look down on us! We are the superior species, and we should be treated like _gods_.”

Hawke cocked her head. “Who is this ‘we’ you keep referring to, _bloodbag_?”

“Quentin _was_ going to turn me before you—”

“And you believed him?” Fenris chuckled drily. “You are a fool.”

“I am not—”

Hawke snapped thrice. “‘Betterment of our kind,’ remember?”

“Yes, of course.” Gascard cleared his throat and began again, “The vampires of this city are tired of their _oppression_ , and have decided the time for ascension has finally arrived. We _will_ take Kirwall—by force if necessary.”

“By force?” Hawke said. “I admit the city has a higher than average vampire population, but even so, there’s no way you could stand against the city guard _and_ the templars. Or, for that matter, the Exalted March the Chantry would inevitably send against you should you manage to succeed.”

Gascard smirked. “We have a plan.”

“Which is?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Fenris was beginning to think this man was the most useless excuse for a human he’d ever met. 

“I know it has something to do with necromancy. Quentin said only the inner circle got to know more.”

“So you did his bidding, no questions asked?” Hawke said. “He was killing people.”

Gascard flinched. “He said if I did what I was told he’d turn me—”

 _Aaand_ back to the turning nonsense. Hawke looked at Fenris, her expression weary. “Would you do the honors, or shall I?”

“He was giving me a chance for immortality. I had to take it—”

Fenris sheathed his sword and flexed his fingers. “I’ll do it.”

“Please. _Please_.” Gascard looked over Fenris’s shoulder, directing his entreaties to Hawke. “Turn me, and I’ll do anything. I’ll be your devoted servant! Your _slave_.”

“Trust me,” Fenris said. Power flooded to his markings. “You should prefer death.” A flash of blue, and Gascard’s heart was gone. Quick, easy. Better than he deserved.

Behind him, Hawke slumped against a wall and dragged her hands over her face. “Shit,” she said.

The study was a disaster of tossed about papers—most of them likely useless. If Quentin and his comrades were trying to keep Gascard away from their secrets, it was unlikely that the leeches would have left anything truly incriminating in his house, but it was worth a shot. “We should look around,” he said.

“Probably,” Hawke agreed. 

Fenris hadn’t noticed the dark circles under her eyes. He knew vampires needed to sleep, but he’d never known any to tire in the way that the living did. In a pinch Danarius could survive on only a half hour of sleep a day, and even then he’d never looked quite as exhausted as Hawke did presently. Though Danarius had never been short on blood either…

He shook the thought away. “Are you alright?”

“Does it matter?”

“If we get attacked—”

She shook her head. “I meant does it matter to _you_?”

“No,” he lied.

“Then why did you ask?”

“I—”

“You know what?” She pushed off the wall. “I don’t want to hear the answer to that question after all. I’m going to see if any of these books have anything interesting in them. You can take the rest.”

He nudged Quentin’s head out of the way and looked at his desk, which was just as messy as the rest of the house. A quick search of it showed him a few broken runecrafting tools, a fist-sized cameo of a woman who looked remarkably like Hawke’s mother, and a notebook filled with what Fenris recognized as equations, even if the handwritten notes in the margins were a mystery to him.

He felt wrong—there was a lump in his throat that wouldn’t go away. He’d felt it since his argument with Hawke in the street outside. She’d asked him if she should have died rather than let herself turn, and, truth be told, he didn’t have an answer. One week ago, he would have said yes unequivocally—that it’s what he would have done in a heartbeat.

But then, he'd never had a family to look after. He’d never had a mother to lose, nor a friend to lean on if he did—at least not that he remembered. If he did…

He would still rather be dead than a leech. He couldn’t regret that.

But he did regret what he’d said to Hawke. And it was eating him.

“Hawke, I—” His gaze alighted on a scrap of paper filled with writing. He recognized from the format that it was a letter—the only one in the pile. It was either recent, important, or, dare to dream, _both_. “I found a note.”

“Oh, good,” she said. He tried not to flinch at the bitter inflection left over in her tone. “I needed a break from _The Magic of Boning: A Practical Guide to Corestry_. It’s not nearly as salacious as the title suggests. What’s it say?”

He handed it to her. “See for yourself.”

She gave him the book she was holding—which, indeed, was full of remarkably detailed diagrams of ladies’ underwear—and read the letter. Her brow furrowed. “‘I have obtained the books you requested, those fool templars will never know they’re missing. The Knight-Commander has looked down on our peoples for too long—soon she will know the price of her contempt. Your friend and colleague, O.’ This comes from the Circle.”

There was no love lost between Fenris and the mages, but this made no sense. Vampires, even mage vampires, were not allowed in the Circle, and Circle mages were not allowed to interact with vampires unsupervised. Indeed, Circle mages were rarely allowed to interact with _anyone_ unsupervised. That this letter even made it out of the gallows was a miracle in and of itself. “How did the Circle get involved in a vampire conspiracy?”

“We don’t know that they are. This O could be a lone wolf.”

“Maybe.” He remembered the magic obsidian stiletto he’d found the other night in his pocket. He pulled it out and held it to her. “This was in Quentin’s workshop. It could be Circle issue.”

Hawke recoiled from it instinctively. “That’s a venatelum—a vampire killer. They’re only forged by Formari. The templars keep them under lock and key.”

“How did Quentin get a hold of one?”

“ _That_ is an excellent question. One I’ll be sure to ask my contacts in the Order.” She tucked the letter into a pocket. “Hold onto it. It could come in handy.”

He put it away. “What do we do now?”

“Get the hell out of here.” She kicked Quinton’s headless body. “Before his friends figure out something’s wrong and come to clean up.”

They made it all the way to the foyer before Hawke collapsed. She fell to her hands and knees with a sharp gasp.

She pushed herself up before he could even offer a hand. “I’m fine,” she gritted out. She took a shaky step, swayed forward dangerously, and staggered sideways into a wall. “I’m _fine_.”

She was not. Her breathing was ragged and labored. Her hands shook violently. The bags under her eyes were somehow even darker. How had he not realized how gaunt she looked?

“When was the last time you ate?”

She took a shaky breath. “I had a lovely dinner of Fereldan turnip soup when I woke up this evening.”

“You know what I meant.”

“It was entirely tasteless—just the way I like it.”

“Hawke.”

She faced him. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, darkened by hunger. He knew that look—he’d seen it many times, on Danarius and others. He’d hated it then, hated the idea of being consumed, feared it. But on Hawke…

He was mortified.

“It’s been a month,” she rasped. “Maybe more.”

That was too long. “You’re starving.” His heart was beating faster than he thought possible. He knew he needed to run. His body refused to move. A compulsion?

“I’m _fine_.”

“You need to eat.” No, not a compulsion. Something else, but what?

Her eyes never left his. “How many times do I have to say it? I. Am. Fine.”

“You’ll die before you make it home.” He took a step forward and felt electricity pulse through his system. He was on the verge of lighting up. “You need to feed.”

He knew what this was. Hunger. Desire. Hawke felt it too. Her eyes flit to his neck.

He pulled his collar away from his throat. There was a scar there, two little puncture wounds—she gasped when she saw them; took one stumbling, unconscious step forward. “I can’t ask you to do this.”

“I'm offering.” His voice was thick with want. They were hardly a step away from each other.

She shook her head. "No," she said. "Not if you—"

Her knees buckled. She caught herself on his shoulder.

He was close enough to feel her breath on his face. “It _does_ matter to me,” he whispered, hardly aware he was speaking, “if you are alright.”

They shared one last long look, and she sank her teeth into him. It hurt—it always did—but it was her mouth on his neck that made it almost too much to bear. The pain didn’t matter—he would suffer any pain to have her closer, as close as possible. She moved her hand from his shoulder to his jaw, pulling him in. He didn't mind—he wrapped an arm around her waist to do the same. Anything, _anything_ , to ease the weight of gravity between them. But it would not. It never would.

Not until he was a part of her, and she a part of him.

Fenris never wanted anything more.

She pushed him away after an achingly, damningly short amount of time. She drank enough to survive, but not to satisfy. Never to satisfy.

She leaned against the wall, chest heaving. Her mouth was red with his blood.

Her mouth…

There was a part of him—a terrible, lucid part—that knew better. That knew that this would pass, that he should let it pass. But the rest of him was hungry. So desperately, desperately hungry.

A drop of his blood trickled down her chin. He didn't even bother to wipe it away.

She tasted sweet and sick, like rotted fruit. Bitter. Cloying. Fermented. She was not a fine wine, but Maker, she was a _strong_ one.

She would destroy him, he felt it like a prophecy. She'd curse him with an unslakeable thirst, one that would leave him shattered, empty—like a templar gone mad with lyrium sickness. And he wanted it. He wanted to be ravaged by her.

One hand snaked around his neck, fingers clawing at his scalp—

_Sun on his back, sea salt in the air. The work is hard, but he’s young, he can handle it. Not like his mother. Every year she gets thinner, paler, weaker…_

He pulled away with a gasp, like a drowning man grasping for air. The room was too small, too stuffy, too _blue_ —he needed space, badly. He staggered backward until he hit the opposite wall, the light from his markings fading fast.

He remembered…

He remembered.

“Something wrong?” Hawke called, a light quaver to her voice. “Did I hurt you?” A ragged breath. “Did I not hurt you _enough_?” She smiled—it was part reassuring, part insecure.

He looked away. “That was…” How could he even begin to describe what that was? Everything he ever feared? Everything he ever wanted? “Too much.”

“Ah. I see.” There was a forced lightness to her tone. He felt sick. “Should I be apologizing, then?”

“No,” he said. “I should— Forgive me.”

She laughed. “If I have nothing to apologize for then neither do you, Fenris.”

He did, though. He had _so much_ to apologize for. She just didn’t know. “I- I can’t—”

“Can’t what?”

He shook his head. “I should go.”

Hawke looked through the door, at the ashy blue-gray sky of early morning. “Me too,” she said. “Will I see you tomorrow?”

He didn’t answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when i initially plotted this out it had 3 chapters, but given that i did a whole ass bad job at that (in fairness there was an election going on, and on, and on) it miiiight end up being 4. depends on how badly i want to torture myself over Nondescript Winter Holiday
> 
> once again, a friend who took one conlang class in college a million years ago is the greatest resource anyone could ask for


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